US marines violated international humanitarian law by using excessive violence in reaction to a suicide bomb attack in Afghanistan, a report says. The reaction was disproportionate and indiscriminate force used, it said. At least 12 civilians died and 35 were injured during the incident which took place on 4 March in Nangarhar province. A preliminary US investigation agreed with the report that the unit did not come under small-arms fire after the bombing, US media reports said. Maj Gen Frank H Kearney III, who ordered the inquiry, told the Washington Post newspaper it had found no evidence that the victims were fighters. "My investigating officer believes these folks were innocent," he was quoted as saying. A US military spokesman said shortly after the incident that the civilians might have been killed by incoming fire from an ambush by insurgents which followed the bombing. ... http://news.bbc.co.uk

A house fire killed five children and injured four people early Sunday in western Illinois, police said. Rescuers arrived to find the two-story home engulfed in flames and later discovered the five bodies inside, authorities said. The blaze was reported around 3 a.m. The four boys and a girl ages 8 months to 10 years were likely family members, Adams County coroner Gary Hamilton said. He declined to release a preliminary cause of death and said autopsies could be conducted Sunday or Monday. The children's bodies were found on the house's second story, Hamilton said. ...http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=3043143

The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief urged Iran on Sunday to be "transparent" in its nuclear program and other countries not to resort to military action over Tehran's nuclear standoff.Mohamed ElBaradei, who heads the International Atomic Energy Agency, is in Jordan on the last leg of a three-nation regional tour that comes as several Mideast countries have said they plan to pursue nuclear energy, a development seen as aimed at countering Iran's own disputed nuclear ambitions."We hope that Iran will cooperate with us, using enough transparency, so that we can assert that it's nuclear program is dedicated for peaceful purposes," ElBaradei said after giving his agency's blessing to Jordan's plans for acquiring a peaceful nuclear energy program."We still have plenty of time to solve the problem peacefully, and there's no way to have that except through dialogue," he said, according to the official Petra news agency....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266162,00.html

Russian riot police beat anti-Kremlin demonstrators with batons in the tourist heart of St. Petersburg on Sunday, a day after authorities snuffed out a similar protest in Moscow.The violence began as some 500 demonstrators calling for the resignation of President Vladimir Putin moved towards a railway station after the end of an officially permitted protest.Police wearing blue urban combat uniforms and crash helmets moved into the crowd, arrested some of the protesters and pushed others to the ground and hit them with batons, a Reuters witness said. “Stop the beating,” demonstrators shouted at the police. ”Fascists. How much did Putin pay you?”The police herded around 150 protesters into police vans, and continued to hit some of them with batons inside the vans. The city authorities had allowed the protesters to hold a meeting, but had banned a march....http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18119465/

A 2-year-old boy was severely burned Saturday after he went down the slide at an elementary school playground. Someone had broken into the school, stolen several bottles of industrial-strength drain cleaner and splashed it all over the playground equipment, authorities said.Peyton Duschl was scheduled for surgery Sunday morning and likely will be hospitalized for several weeks, said Carol Duschl, the boy's mother."I just don't understand what would draw somebody to do something like that," Duschl told WMAR-TV. "What kind of sick joke is that?"Peyton suffered second- and third-degree burns, mostly on his legs, from the cleaner, which contains a strong concentration of sulfuric acid, said Division Chief Michael Robinson of the Baltimore County Fire Department. No one else was injured....http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266134,00.html

The Vatican's ambassador to Israel will attend a Holocaust memorial service at the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, reversing an earlier decision to boycott the event, officials said Sunday. The boycott had threatened to upset fragile relations between Israel and the Vatican. The Vatican's ambassador, Monsignor Antonio Franco, announced last week that he would skip Sunday night's event because of a caption at the museum describing the wartime conduct of Pope Pius XII. The caption next to the picture of Pius in Yad Vashem's museum reads, "even when reports about the murder of Jews reached the Vatican, the pope did not protest," refusing to sign a 1942 Allied condemnation of the massacre of Jews. Pius "maintained his neutral position" with two exceptions, the caption says, criticizing "his silence and absence of guidelines." The exceptions were appeals to the rulers of Hungary and Slovakia toward the end of the war....http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-04-15-yadvashem_N.htm?csp=34